Athelas
by LondonBelow
Summary: The truth of Estel's identity leads to revelations and a new degree of hope.


Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings or any characters and/or places thereof  
  
*****  
  
Rain pelted heavily and hard against the roof, causing a sound similar to that of a child's toy. The clouds spent the morning blown about by the wind, buffeted this way and that, until at last, abused to a point of resistance, they began to collect in the afternoon, blocking out the sun and darkening the elven haven Imladris. In the early evening thunder rumbled, but until dark the rain held off. Then it fell, hard and heavy, unrestrained and without warning.  
  
Elladan looked up at the sky and said, "In a quarter of an hour we will be drenched at this pace."  
  
Elrohir followed his twin's gaze and agreed, "Aye. Shall we race?"  
  
The youngest brother looked worriedly to the eldest. "Will you be all right to race?" he asked, referring to the wound Elladan had sustained during their trip.  
  
"No need to cluck, mother hen," Elladan answered. "The only one sore will be the loser."  
  
"And it shall not be me," Elrohir said, nudging his mare into a canter.  
  
The rain beat them out, and before reporting to their father the success of their mission, the boys bathed and changed into dry clothes. Only Estel held qualms about their actions. He knew the evils of the Orcs and had recently learned of Lady Celebrían and the reasoning behind his brothers' zeal in their hunt. He realized that there was no good in these creatures, that they cared only for destruction and themselves, but nevertheless their blood weighed his conscience heavily.  
  
Estel remembered his dreams, his childhood nightmares of the Orcs and knew now that they had killed his birth father. He remembered the man, but only vaguely: only as a warm body cuddling him as a small child and as a corpse, reeking and bloodied. In his nightmares he saw these creatures kill his father and his mother, the latter image a figment of his imagination. He dreamed that they tortured and murdered his brothers. Elrond, however, never featured in these terrors, seeming to the child far too strong to be destroyed by Orcs.  
  
He meant to ask Elrond about his regrets. Should he feel this angry fervor, should it spirit his veins as it did those of the twins? Was this regret normal, acceptable? It felt wrong. Estel felt sick with himself. What sort of a monster accepted so easily the blood of his kin? Yet try as he might, the lust for retribution always was false.  
  
"You have done well," Elrond told him.  
  
Estel nodded. He could not face his foster father, not after what he had learned. Do you miss her? Estel wanted to ask. What was she like? Was she beautiful? Was she like my mother? Why, Estel wanted to ask, have you summoned me alone?  
  
"Elladan and Elrohir spoke of their mother to you, they tell me."  
  
Only one word, "Yes."  
  
"Look at me, Estel."  
  
A moment passed between them in silence, their wills battling, and Estel battling internally: the obedience of duty or the cry of his heart? He shook his head. "No, sir."  
  
"Estel. What are you frightened of? Are you afraid of me? I have not changed since last we met. Look at me, Estel." His tone left no room for argument, a small detail no son ever pays heed to. Estel could not identify the motivation of his reticence, but he refused to raise his eyes. He let himself be forced, though: when strong fingers nudged his chin upwards Estel did nothing to protest. "There now." Waves of fear melted away. "I want you to understand that I am the same person you have known these past years, and simply because you now know of Celebrían, nothing has changed. You are still my son and as such I love you."  
  
"I am sorry for your loss," Estel said.  
  
Perhaps an hour later, Elrond sat in his study with his head in his hands. "What have I done?" he asked. "Ai, he is too young. What is twenty summers? Nothing! An elf of naught but twenty summers is a babe yet!"  
  
"Ada?"  
  
"Estel!" Elrond stood, expecting to see his youngest, but it was not he who had come.  
  
Elladan apologized. "He is the message but not the messenger."  
  
Elrond prepared himself for the worst, then felt mightily silly when Elrohir said, "We went to speak with him and he sent us away, saying he needed time to himself. You told him, didn't you?"  
  
"Yes, Elrohir, I told him," Elrond said. "Is he all right?"  
  
"He is numb, we think. When we entered his room he sat in darkness."  
  
Elrond wondered if he had made the right choice. Estel behaved as an adult, sometimes playing with his brothers and laughing but overall a solemn boy and thoughtful. He seemed ready to know. Elrond wondered, did he understand? Did Estel feel bereft of a family? Hopefully he did not.  
  
"Estel?" Elrond knocked. "Aragorn?" he tried.  
  
The answer came, strangled and raw, "Come in."  
  
The room had been plunged into darkness, although the window remained visible the clouds and rain blocked the moon. Elrond entered quietly, unobtrusively, and closed the door behind him. He knew this room well enough in darkness, as would any father whose child saw blood in his sleep or awoke in a feverish daze. Without incident he found the lamp and steel and flint, and struck together the latter two to bring light to the room.  
  
Aragorn sat on the edge of his bed, his shoulders turned inwards and his spine rounded in a perversion of proper posture. He held something in cupped hands. Elrond knelt before the man who had only minutes ago been a boy, and for all his effort in Elrond's mind yet was. Neither man spoke. Very gently Elrond moved Aragorn's fingers to see what he held.  
  
"Athelas," Aragorn said, as the leaves became visible. The tears gleaming on his cheeks and tinging red the rims of his eyes sounded clearly in his voice. "I wonder, had I known then...could I have saved him? Could I have saved the life of my father? He could be here now...had I been but a few years senior, I might have saved him."  
  
"No," Elrond spoke quietly, soothing, as one might a young child. "That is not a wound from which one recovers. It has but one outcome. Such wounds care not for the details of a man's life: his ancestry nor descendants." The silence between them, broken only by the huffing sobs of Aragorn's irrational despair, spoke to Elrond, and he knew that he would say aloud the darkest implications of Aragorn's speech. "You did not kill your father."  
  
"Yet his death mars my soul. Why does it not weigh so heavily as those of the Orcs I killed? Somewhere inside of me I feel a spark setting upon rain- soaked wood, that spark ought erupt in the same zealous flames your sons know for their mother. Why am I not like them? They are good people, am I by this standard not?"  
  
Elrond brushed strands of hair from Aragorn's face, making contact without being blatant about it. "I do not wish to kill," he said. "I love my wife and miss her, and often do think of revenge, yet regardless of who or what, I do not wish to take a life. Am I not a good person?"  
  
"Ada..." What could he say? Words could not be taken back. "I'm sorry." He considered this for a moment. "You are not my blood. I always knew, and yet..."  
  
"If it helps," the Elrond offered, "your sire of old was my brother. By this indeed I am your blood."  
  
Aragorn's heart swelled with gratitude. "Thank you," he said. "Truly I am sorry for implying that you are not a good person."  
  
"That's all right." Elrond sat beside his son and Aragorn tried to staunch the flow of tears. "It is all right, Estel. Go ahead and cry. This is not weakness."  
  
He felt frail, shaking, and a part of him felt ashamed to be sitting here like a child and letting his father rub his back while he cried. Then, another part of Aragorn wondered what he had to be ashamed. Every person feels. Finally he found an answer and said it aloud; "I am not a king." He meant this in spirit.  
  
"No," Elrond agreed, "you are not. But you are learning. For the moment, that will suffice."  
  
"And when it does not," Aragorn began, then together the two finished his statement, "I shall rise to the challenge."  
  
I have become a man, Aragorn thought. Though he sobbed he did not do so violently, though he accepted comfort he did so not of weakness but of love. A man, he realized, is not unlike a boy: his actions remain. Only his motives change. Though the body remains the same, the spirit grows. Childhood fades. Men keep of their boyhood souvenirs: memories, and if they are truly lucky, love.  
  
Aragorn had taken more, he had taken virtue and happiness. These would not fade to memory. Nor, he swore, would his father, although to whom he referred he could not say. Perhaps he meant both. In many ways, they had seen him to manhood together. His nightmares were not horrors so much as reminders. When Arathorn stumbled bleeding through the camp, he meant not to alarm his son but to lay eyes on his child one last time.  
  
Knowing this, Aragorn was at peace. In his dreams he did not fear. In life, none could dictate their emotions. Aragorn had wisdom and knew better than to try. Events and emotions would come and he could not stop them.  
  
"I do not fear power, only that it should corrupt me in my own weakness. This I can fight, and I will fight, with virtue and goodness until the day I die."  
  
*****  
  
The End 


End file.
